Publications
The Representation Trap: How Minority Power Shapes Electoral Politics in India. [Abstract] [Paper] Forthcoming at the American Political Science Review
Awards: Sage Best Paper Award, APSA Comparative Politics Section (2023); Best Paper Award, APSA Elections, Public Opinion, and Voting Behavior Section (2023); Weber Best Paper Award, APSA Religion and Politics Section (2023); Kenneth D. Wald Best Graduate Student Paper Award, APSA Religion and Politics Section (2023); Honorable Mention for Best Paper Award, APSA Democracy and Autocracy Section (2023); Kellogg/Notre Dame Award, Best Paper in Comparative Politics, MPSA (2024); Richard E. Matland Award, Best Paper on Representation, Elections, or Voting, MPSA (2024)
Liberal democracy requires that minority groups be represented in politics. This article argues that minority representation can also generate headwinds for political inclusion by dividing the minority group and consolidating the dominant group. I study the combination of these processes, termed the representation trap, through a mixed-methods examination of Muslims in India. Analyses of election results and an original survey of Hindu and Muslim voters show that electing a Muslim representative divides Muslim votes across an increased share of coethnic candidates and consolidates Hindu votes for the majoritarian party in the subsequent election. Qualitative evidence and a vignette experiment trace these patterns to two mechanisms: sub-identity activation among Muslims and super-ordinate identity mobilization among Hindus. By showing how representation restructures elite and voter behavior within both minority and dominant groups, the article highlights the dynamic nature of ethnic politics and challenges the view of minorities as politically unified.
Over the past decade, India has been central to debates on democracy. Many viewed the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) underperformance in the 2024 election as a sign of democratic resilience. This essay argues instead that it signaled further backsliding in the country’s most vulnerable dimension of democracy — its liberal democracy. The election reinforced a troubling status quo for India’s largest religious minority: explicit exclusion from one side of the political spectrum and strategic silence from the other. These dual forces leave Indian Muslims in a political bind, further constraining their prospects for political inclusion.
How and when can religious times become focal points for communal violence? In the context of Hindu-Muslim riots in India, I argue that incompatible ritual holidays where one religion's rituals are at odds with another (e.g. sacrificing cows or engaging in processions with idolatry) help explain the positive effect of sacred time on religious rioting. Holidays with incompatible rituals provide doctrinal differences that make riots more likely. These types of holidays can be used by riot entrepreneurs to incite violence or can independently raise an individual's willingness to engage in violence. I provide support for this argument by analyzing data on Hindu-Muslim riots across 100 years. I investigate the mechanisms through additional analysis and examining historical and present-day cases of riots that occurred on holidays. By focusing on the content of religion, this paper demonstrates how particular religious holidays can provide the underlying conditions that elites use to incite religious violence.
States worldwide use facial recognition technology (FRT) to assist in policing citizens, monitoring public goods, and even running elections. This article asks how FRT in polling stations affects voter turnout. Existing research on technology in elections offer ambiguous predictions for the direction and magnitude of the effect. I leverage a state-run randomized pilot of FRT in local elections in a municipality in Telangana, India to show that polling stations with FRT have lower turnout compared to those without. I discuss how three possible mechanisms might explain this effect: logistical issues, shifts in fraudulent activity, and apprehension about government surveillance particularly among marginalized citizens. Given the small sample of this pilot, the findings should be viewed as suggestive but indicative of the need for future research on the consequences that new technologies in governance can have on citizens in democracies.
Book Project
The Burden of Representation: Minority Identity and Politics in India. (tentative title)
This book project is based on my doctoral dissertation, which received the Gabriel A. Almond Award (2024) for the best dissertation in comparative politics, the Juan Linz Prize (2024) for the best dissertation in the comparative study of democracy, and the Best Fieldwork Award (2024) from the APSA Democracy and Autocracy section. The project also received the Sadar Patel Award (2023), which honors the best doctoral dissertation on any aspect of modern India across disciplines.
Book manuscript workshop held in March 2025. Preparing for Submission.
Working Papers
Formal Positions and the Reproduction of Party Hierarchy. [Abstract] [Working Paper] (with Pratik Mahajan and Rahul Verma) Revise and Resubmit.
Party organizations create formal internal positions to manage work and outreach, and party workers use them to pursue advancement. Yet their consequences for hierarchy remain underexplored. We examine how party workers who hold formal positions differ from those who do not using two original surveys from India. In our first survey of 736 workers in one state, position holders are less supportive of intra-party democracy reforms, including internal primaries and the removal of nomination fees. Interviews suggest that position-holders value party organization control and centralization because their own advancement depended on it. In our national survey of 717 workers across 21 states and 17 parties, position holders report greater ambition, party attachment, and political satisfaction. Women and ethnic minorities are as likely as privileged groups to hold these positions, unlike in candidacy and elected office. Formal positions thus emerge as an underexplored threshold of loyalty and gatekeeping within party hierarchy.
The Expression of Religious Identity in India: Evidence from 505 Million Voter Records. [Abstract] [Working Paper] (with Viktor Enssle, Tanushree Goyal, Saad Gulzar, and Gufran Pathan)
We provide a theoretically grounded descriptive analysis of religious identity expression in India by examining personal names in over 505 million voter records. Standard theories of identity predict asymmetry: under rising discrimination, minorities should moderate visible markers while majorities express identity freely. In contrast, we find that both Hindus and Muslims show similarly high and increasing levels of religious distinctiveness in names. To characterize this rise, we examine the divine and social components of religious identity. We find no increase in doctrinally rooted names, inconsistent with growing religious devotion as an explanation. Instead, both groups increasingly draw from a smaller set of common names, and identity expression is stronger in segregated areas for the locally dominant group, highlighting the social function of religious identity. Together, these patterns reveal a precarious calculus in which minority moderation no longer holds, and cultural divides intensify alongside, and ahead of, majoritarian electoral politics,
Leader Marches as an Opposition Electoral Strategy. [Abstract] [Working Paper] (with Resuf Ahmed) Under Review.
Opposition parties often struggle in elections against populist incumbents. One extraordinary campaign tactic adopted across contexts by opposition parties facing populists is leader marches, where a party head treks across the country, engaging voters directly. This tactic addresses the image, reach, and electability challenges that populists impose. We study its consequences through the Indian National Congress leader's 150-day Bharat Jodo Yatra. A difference-in-differences design with newly collected election data shows that geographic exposure to the march helped Congress, but only near the route, in proximate elections, and where it was the principal opposition. Interviews and descriptive evidence show the march countered the party's elite image, overcame a pro-incumbent media environment, and signaled viability. An original survey a year later shows that reported participation correlates with favorable views of Congress. The article reveals that opposition extraordinary campaigning can make electoral inroads against entrenched populists, even if it fails to unseat them.
Pressured from Above, Constrained from Within: Civil Society–Opposition Party Electoral Linkages. [Abstract] (with Pratik Mahajan) Under Review.
Across contexts, democracy-eroding incumbents weaken civil society organizations (CSOs) and opposition parties, leading both to collaborate against the incumbent during elections. Yet, this shared threat does not produce uniform partnerships on the ground. We argue that although restrictive environments foster CSO-opposition party linkages, each side's internal base constrains how that linkage manifests locally. CSOs deepen collaboration when candidates align with their social mission, allowing leaders to protect organizational autonomy and reputation with members. Parties deepen collaboration when CSOs offer clear electoral value, making ties defensible to party cadres. We test this argument in India using 62 days of election campaign shadowing and original surveys of 730 CSO representatives and 736 opposition party workers. Two survey experiments show how alignment shapes the scope, cohesion, and reciprocity of engagement that both actors expect. The article highlights how internal dynamics can constrain the way opposition actors collectively respond to and resist democratic erosion.
When Civil Society Overreaches: Voter Aversion to Expansive Civil Society Electoral Mobilization. [Abstract] (with Pratik Mahajan)
When civil society organizations (CSOs) engage in partisan mobilization, they are most effective with core voters to whom they are directly connected. Yet across contexts, CSOs often pursue expansive mobilization, reaching beyond their base to engage peripheral voters. Drawing on interviews with CSO representatives and observations of their electoral activity in an Indian state election, we inductively develop a theoretical argument to explain this strategy. We argue that under restrictive civil society conditions, CSOs are incentivized to mobilize expansively, especially through umbrella coalitions, because doing so increases their electoral reach while minimizing internal dissent and shielding them from government pressure. A pre-registered conjoint experiment with 730 representatives from 153 CSOs in India shows that CSOs adopt expansive mobilization across civic and partisan activities, and view themselves as likely to succeed compared to party workers with an expansive set of voters. However, a paired-profile conjoint experiment with 2,368 voters reveals the constraint that voters prefer partisan mobilizations by CSOs over parties only when they are coethnic or have a community connection, seeking particularistic ties over expansive ones. A third survey experiment with 2,955 voters demonstrates that expansive partisan CSO mobilization is perceived as insincere and less likely to deliver rights-based benefits. These findings highlight a central challenge for CSOs mobilizing in electoral politics: while restrictive environments push CSOs to act collectively and broadly, voters prefer particularistic ties that limit the effectiveness of such expansive outreach.
Works in Progress
Meta-Misperceptions and Voting Behavior among Majority and Minority Groups.
Marriage, Conversion, and Majority-Minority Conflict: Theory and Evidence from Colonial Burma.
Meso-Level Drivers of Citizen Collective Action in India.
Other Writings
Mapping Muslim Voting Behavior in India. February 2024. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. [India Election 2024 Series] [Republished in the Hindustan Times]
Decoding Bharat Jodo Yatra’s impact on Karnataka elections. May 2023. Hindustan Times. (with Resuf Ahmed) [Link]
Using IOM Flow Monitoring Data to Describe Migration in West and Central Africa. (with Darin Christensen, Guy Grossman, and Jeremy M. Weinstein) [Report] [Coverage in The Economist]
Book Review of Mass Religious Ritual and Intergroup Tolerance: The Muslim Pilgrims’ Paradox. Nationalities Papers. 2019. [Link]